Paralyzed, A Soldier Asks Why (10/15/04)

Paralyzed, A Soldier Asks Why
NYTF000020041015e0af00023
Editorial Desk; SECTA
By BOB HERBERT
823 Words
15 October 2004
The New York Times
Late Edition - Final
25
English
(c) 2004 New York Times Company
DALE CITY, Va. -- Sunlight was pouring through the doorway to the furnished basement of the neat two-story home on Reardon Lane. The doorway had been widened to accommodate the wheelchair of Army Staff Sgt. Eugene Simpson Jr., who was once a star athlete but now, at age 27, spends a lot of time in his parents' basement, watching the large flat-screen TV.

I asked the sergeant whether he ever gets depressed. ''No,'' he said quickly, before adding, ''I mean, I could say I was sad for a while. But it didn't really last long.''

Sergeant Simpson's expertise is tank warfare. But the Army is stretched thin, and the nation's war plans at times have all the coherence of football plays drawn up in the schoolyard. When Sergeant Simpson's unit was deployed from Germany to Iraq, the tanks were left behind and the sergeant ended up bouncing around Tikrit in a Humvee, on the lookout for weapons smugglers and other vaguely defined ''bad guys.''